Outside Oklahoma City, the day after Christmas, I found myself lying on a massage table draped in Native American quilts. No sooner had a bear blanket covered me than the Chickasaw medicine man began dusting my body with a feather covered in white sage powder.

HARTFORD — A Native American craftswoman working to preserve her tribe’s culture shared artifacts and stories of Kiowa history with about 30 people Saturday afternoon at the Lewis and Clark Confluence Tower. Attendees also saw a traditional dance performed.

KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia "What's the score?" asks Svetlana Fedorenko as she enters a bathhouse in the Caucasus Mountains with her husband and friends: The U.S.-Russia hockey game was on, and most of the country was glued to a television.

South Korea's Jeju Island has a rich tradition of shamanism - but growing up there, Dohee Lee didn't know this. Her father was in the South Korean military. The family relocated to a base on the mainland when Lee was 7. Lee's Christian parents didn't want her to learn about the shamans, who act as intermediaries between human beings and the spirits; they didn't even want their daughter to dance, so Lee took classes in secret until age 16.